


Cleaving

by recrudescence



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-01
Updated: 2010-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-05 14:48:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recrudescence/pseuds/recrudescence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The crew is smaller now, folding in on itself to keep from falling apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cleaving

The crew is smaller now, folding in on itself to keep from falling apart.

 

There was a client, number 23599 in the Guild database, who slept with her like this, in the very same bed. All he wanted, just kisses and comfort and a body to sleep beside. River knows.

 

Inara’s lips smiling sleepily against her nape and Inara’s warm rounded arm draped over her middle. River’s legs spread and she wriggles subtly until the nightgown works up, folds of Inara satiny and cool against the heat of her cunt. Inara gives her such pretty things to sleep in, shares her bed and keeps her close, kisses her cheek and calls her sweetie.

 

Soft-slow tightening of the remaining threads. The sometimes-lucid sometimes-pilot needs to be taken care of and treated well, too, Inara says silently, and River hears. Now that she’s moved into her shuttle again, Inara is forging relationships more strongly than before, with less reservations. Going so far as to push certain musings on Mal from her mind and let River into it, knowing River can see into her and finding that a challenge to keep her thoughts calm and collected. Nothing incriminating to be found.

 

Inara works her up to it bit by bit. Just short visits at first, when it’s only an hour or two before Mal comes creeping back into the timbre of Inara’s mind; then entire nights, once her powers of what she privately calls fortitude and River privately calls self-deprivation improve. Gradually progressing, same as she would if she wore one of her harnesses and guided River into her lap, bare and soothing and arms coming up to hold her, guide her into riding it, teaching her to learn the feeling of something that large inside her.

 

On her belly in the middle of her own plain bed with her legs spread and the nightgown bunched underneath her, she comes from simply rutting against it. More than once. Inara is bred to mold and manipulate tension, so River does her best to dispel as much of it as she can.

 

Happily, innocently sharing Inara’s bed, asking questions about clients, thumbing Inara’s cheekbones and kissing them, cuddling up to her and feeling soft hands caressing her back, like she’s as uncomplicated as a kitten. The word _friend _hovers warm and sweet, trickling meltingly amidst the scent of amber-jasmine candles. She would purr for Inara. Grow a cock for Inara, pink and hard and perfect, just to watch her eyes close in bliss when she slid it inside her. Turning her face against perfumed pillows when she would far rather lie back on them and gasp for her, Inara’s evil red tongue plump and sinful between her legs, lapping up the wetness on her thighs. Sometimes Inara is smooth and hairless, depending on the client’s preference and it’s fun to imagine licking her like a fruit, wondering if she can taste everyone who’s been there before.

 

River knows what’s allowed and what isn’t. No way to watch Inara plying her trade and making love, that’s one of the not-allowed bits, so she has Inara  act it out with her inside the safety of her half-healed mind. Imagining—so easy and so gratifying, every time. Carefully picking and choosing the images to run through her head instead of having them shoehorned and splintered there without her consent. She can do it for hours, until Mal reminds her to fly or Simon reminds her to eat.

 

Poor Inara, gilded skin over bare white bones, a darksick secret buried beneath her perfect curls and beautifully intact brain. Arteries gracefully weaving under the paler skin of her wrists, arms gracefully weaving around River, who’s too polite and too perceptive to tell the truth. Inara opening the door for her, drawing her in and keeping her close, kisses and comfort and her own little sliver of simplicity.

She keeps that syringe tucked safely away, but River knows. Everyone should travel before they die.


End file.
